Although Northern California has proven to be unexpectedly difficult for us, we’ve also had some great fortune recently. Shedder, Roo, and Jess – who have been hiking just behind us for weeks – finally caught us near Chester. It was wonderful to see some friendly faces after being separated from them for 600 miles!

Though our differing paces separated us from time to time last week, we all made it to Burney within half a day of one another. Shedder and Roo had some friends meeting them at Burney Falls State Park and offered to help us slack pack the 8 PCT miles from Burney to the park. We happily accepted and hiked to the park carrying only water and leftover pizza from the night before, while they took our gear to the campground. We spent the night car camping with their friends, eating brats and s’mores and drinking beers.

We got a late start the next day, as we wanted to hike down to Burney Falls before hitting the trail. It was amazingly gorgeous – one of the most beautiful natural scenes I’ve ever seen. The water not only ran over the top of the falls but also seemed to pour out of the side of the rocky earth itself.

We then hiked into Shasta National Forest and into blissfully cooler weather. The hiking was easy, with deep woods leading to ridges with great views of Mt. Shasta. Unfortunately, the mountain has been shrouded in a haze for days, caused by multiple wildfires around Northern California. Some are fairly close to the trail but have caused no trail closures and are now mostly contained.

Yesterday, we arrived in the tiny town of Castella and camped at the Castle Crags Campground. Shedder’s parents visited from Redding last night with some AMAZING trail magic. Pizza, soda, beer, pasta salad, fruit, sandwich fixings, chips, and much, much more. 14+ hungry hikers couldn’t even finish the spread! Today we hike on toward Etna – our last stop in California (!), where Ashleigh’s parents are planning to meet us.

As we left Belden and the Braaten’s, all the hikers were talking about the long 14-mile, 4,500-foot climb out of town. But there was something else on the hikers’ minds too: a reported heat wave was about to hit Northern California. And let me tell you, they weren’t kidding.

As we climbed up the hill out of Belden that morning, the temperature began to climb with us. We hit a 3-mile stretch that had been burned in a wildfire in 2008. Shade was rare, and the thermometer on my watch read 95 degrees. It wasn’t even noon yet…

The next few days brought more of the same. Amazing heat with high humidity that makes us horribly sweaty all the time. We constantly want showers.

The heat has taken a toll on our pace and overall level of motivation. We took an unscheduled stop in the town of Chester to celebrate reaching the halfway point and ended up loitering in an air conditioned pizza joint for four hours. We then took another unscheduled stop in the town of Old Station after resupplying at Drakesbad Guest Ranch only one day prior.

At Old Station, we positioned ourselves for the upcoming 30-mile stretch without water on Hat Creek Rim. (We also positioned ourselves in front of tacos, burgers, and ice cream.) The next evening, we hiked out on to the rim. It was late and we had planned to night hike, but after tripping over rock after rock for three hours, we decided to stop early after 7 miles and wake around 4am to beat the heat. Unfortunately, we woke late and scrambled to get in as many miles as we could before it got too hot. But the heat was soon upon us, and it quickly reached 100+ degrees. The rim was highly exposed for most of its 30 miles, and we baked in the heat. We were carrying plenty of water, but its temperature quickly matched that of the surrounding air, and it was like drinking out of a hot tub. It was one of our worst days on the trail.

We slogged the 23 miles to water, and then, in a burst of motivation, hiked 4 more to Highway 299 in hopes of treating ourselves to a night in town. We stuck our thumbs out and looked as happy as we could while car after car passed us. We were out of water and losing light. We just wanted a ride into Burney for a room and a shower. Finally, just as we were losing hope, a women picked us up and drove us to a motel. We quickly showered and ordered a large pizza, family size salad, and 2 liters of soda to be delivered to the room. We gleefully ate in bed and watched TV. It was one of the most satisfying meals I’ve ever had.

From Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods”…

Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.

Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really.

You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasperation, “far removed from the seats of strife,” as the early explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.

There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.

At times, you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago, crossed this stream yesterday, clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already. But most of the time you don’t think. No point. Instead, you exist in a kind of mobile Zen mode, your brain like a balloon tethered with string, accompanying but not actually part of the body below. Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don’t think “Hey, I did sixteen miles today,” any more than you think, “Hey, I took eight thousand breaths today.” It’s just what you do.

Here we are. Here we are in Northern California, slowly slogging our way toward Oregon. The rolling hills seem to be the same every 10 miles or so: tall pines, ridge walks, sand, rocks, sun, heat… one hiker described this section as “the desert with trees.” We’re very thankful for those trees though, offering us shade through the hottest parts of the day.

We’ve heard that many hikers have dropped out around here and within the past few sections. Our spirits remain fairly high as we make our way north, but we have been separated from many of our hiking friends, and most days, we hike alone. Between the High Sierra, which naturally tends to fan hikers out, and all the time we took off in Mammoth Lakes and Tahoe, everyone has spread out quite a bit. Some of our friends are up to a week ahead of us (Prophet, Hermes and Lotus, Fun Size, Cuddles, Goodall, Blur, Robin Hood, Uni-Croc and Scat Tracker); and some are as much as a week behind (PRT and Peter Pan, Pepper Flake, Shotput, Jess, Shedder and Roo). But we are constantly meeting lots of new hikers on the trail, and it’s been great to make new friends.

We’ve made it to the tiny, tiny town of Belden, where wonderful Trail Angels Laurie and Brenda Braaten have taken us in for a bed and a shower at their home, which is known as “Little Haven.” We woke up early and speed hiked to the town in order to get a hot breakfast at a restaurant. We have come into the habit of ordering three breakfasts between us, usually involving eggs and french toast. Ashe considers breakfast to be the most satisfying meal to hike toward, and we usually make a point of arriving in town early enough (or staying long enough) to enjoy it. Our next stop will be Drakesbad Resort, where we will pick up a few packages and celebrate the halfway point!

Leaving Lake Tahoe was extremely difficult. It meant leaving a bed, shower, toilet, refrigerator (with ice machine!), beers, an absolutely GORGEOUS house on the lake (oh yeah, did we mention that our friend D. Jay’s parents have a house directly ON Lake Tahoe?), and most importantly our friends. Six of our University of Washington alumni friends, mostly from the Bay Area, came out to meet us in Tahoe. We stayed at D.Jay’s parents’ beautiful home (thanks so much Dianne and Rafe!!) and spent our days paddle boarding, swimming, sun bathing, eating, and drinking by the lake. It was wonderful – a luxurious break from the trail. Saying goodbye to our friends and the lake was hard, but the call of the trail was strong, and at long last, we had to leave.

Now, we are officially setting off for Northern California – the great unknown as far as we are concerned. The terrain has been getting easier, and the miles come quicker. It’s been rolling hills and long ridge walks, with cedars and pines providing shade from the sun. But It’s starting to become more of a mental challenge than a physical one. Northern California, so we’ve heard, is a monotonous and boring section – “the doldrums,” as it’s known among thru hikers. So although it is no longer physically difficult to put in big miles, we now face the challenge of motivating ourselves to get up every morning and hike. Our spirits are high right now though, and we are feeling great physically.

We’ve made it to the tiny town of Sierra City and are staying with Trail Angels Bill and Margaret Price, who run the Red Moose Inn and allow hikers camp in their backyard. From here, we will hike north toward a parade of tiny towns in Northern California, the next being Belden.

 

 

 

 

We are very lucky hikers. We haven’t had much bad weather, we haven’t had any major gear problems, and we haven’t had any major injuries. But we are lucky for other reasons as well; we have amazing friends along the trail who are willing to drive hours to see us, or open their wonderful homes to our smelly selves. Not all hikers can say that. It gives us something to look forward to, and we have been looking forward to Mammoth Lakes for two months.

We were planning to take two “Zero Days” while staying with our good friend Peter in Mammoth. We ended up taking four… After our hiker chores were complete, we did some extreme relaxing, including floating down the Owens River, sitting in natural hot springs, and eating lots of amazing food. It was wonderful.

Peter would later join us on trail, with his fly rod in hand, to hike the section from Mammoth to Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite. The day we hiked out, it was cloudy and cold, but by that evening it had cleared up. It was a beautiful section. Pete fished in alpine lakes and streams all along the trail. Unfortunately for him, however, Pete joined us just in time to experience the birth of swarms of mosquitoes, which annoyed and bit us at every turn. We had been hearing horror stories about the mosquitoes in this section. As one hiker put it, “it’s a whole different kind of torture.” So we bundled up in our rain shells and head nets, doused ourselves in bug repellent, and built small campfires (our first campfires of the trip) to keep the damn things away. Going to the “bathroom” was especially interesting…

When we arrived at Tuolumne Meadows, we were met by Patricia, Pete’s girlfriend, who greeted us with homemade lemon bars and beer! Though sad to finally part ways, we bid farewell to them there and hiked on toward Sonora Pass. With a cloud of mosquitoes following us, we plodded on to the 1,000 mile mark! It feels truly surreal to think we have backpacked 1,000 miles to the middle of California (the longest state ever). We quickly resupplied at a small resort called Kennedy Meadows 10 miles east of Sonora Pass (not the same one as down south) and hiked on.

From Sonora Pass onward, the terrain got much easier. We were VERY excited to get to Lake Tahoe where our good friend D. Jay lives and where several close friends from the Bay Area – Brent, Shy, Chris, Ben, and Natalie – were planning to join us for the weekend, along with an encore appearance from Pete. Motivated by the prospect of a comfortable bed and a house full of friends, we cruised through this last section. We did a 28-mile day followed by a 31-mile day – our biggest day yet. We ended up arriving in South Lake Tahoe a day earlier than expected, on the Fourth of July (which was major culture shock). So we hitched up to Tahoe City where D. Jay lives and ended up spending the Fourth on his porch, barbecuing and drinking beer. On Friday, everyone arrives from the Bay Area and Mammoth, and we’ll celebrate 1,000 miles among friends.